Re: [gentoo-soc] Project Proposal : GenCC for "Gentoo Community Compiling"

[Antoine Pinsard]

On Mon, 2013-02-18 at 18:27 -0500, Rich Freeman wrote:
> Gentoo's reason for being isn't so that we can compile stuff every
> time we solve it.  That is just a means to an end.  The reason for
> being is so that we have a much higher level of control over what ends
> up getting installed.  If users could get the same binary they would
> have gotten by compiling things themselves without actually having to
> compile it, I doubt anybody would miss the build time.

That's what I meant but it wasn't well expressed, you're right.

> My basic point is that if you manage to solve the problems that
> prevent an ad-hoc distribute compiler infrastructure from working,
> chances are that you could just build a library of binary packages
> with just as many supported options/permutations.

Tell me if I'm wrong but when I look at the gcc man I can see a huge set
of options (even if you only take optimization and machine dependent
options). Building one package with all combination already seems
unthinkable to me. I just can't imagine building a whole repository that
way. Moreover most of the built packages wouldn't be ever downloaded.
Whereas ad-hoc compiling just need to be run on the same architecture.

Yet I agree with you when you say "Why distribute all the
compiling when you can just ask for what should be an identical final
executable?". Maybe a combination of both could be good. The client just
ask a server if package X with USE flags "a -b c" and gcc options
"--foo=b -a -r" have already been compiled. If yes, the client just have
to download the binary. If no, the server (which needs to be trusted)
does the job and stores the result for the next requests. Which joins
the single organization idea you stated in your first message.

Regards,

Antoine Pinsard